ED 566E - April 25, 2008, No. 14

The Destiny presentation was interesting. I think it would be nice to be able to devote an entire class to some time of circulation software. It was nice to see the presentation, but it would have been nice to try out some of the features ourselves. It looks like there are a lot of really nice features. We had a Follett presentation last semester too and they demonstrated their collection analysis tool and collection development tool, both of which are free. The rep told us we could all get a user id and password to play with. You might want to look into doing something like this for next year.

I loved the bookmark demo. That is something that I have wanted to do and it was nice to get a demonstration and then do it ourselves. This is my preferred way to learn.

Your feedback on our paper was very helpful. We went and reviewed our paper as a group and added some additional reflection and application. The Web site project has been really helpful and I usually dread group work, but this has been a very good experience. I think that is mostly because of the other people in my group, but also we've used the wiki to communicate and compose our paper and that has really helped. I would highly recommend the use of a wiki for group projects in the future.

Using the idea of creating a Web site at the beginning of the semester to try out various applications I have a few other suggestions.
1. Link the blog to the Web site and indicate from the beginning that it is for the entire class. I would have liked to have read what others wrote about.
2. Have everyone create a del.icio.us site linked to the Web site and add relevant Web sites as the semester progresses. Be sure to tag them 566E. I ran across lots of neat Web sites during the semester, but fell I had a forum to share them.
3. Have people share a little (5 minutes) about paper topics the week they are turned in. I think I could have learned a lot from other people's papers. I couldn't cover all topics by myself.
4. Require the Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts book. It looks good. My one complaint was that I was not at all happy with the text. It had some interesting information, but it was poorly written.